The Secret Service has boxed itself in and it knows it

Here’s the thing about this Secret Service text message scandal. You only get away with destroying evidence if no one knows or finds out that the evidence existed to begin with. If you destroy evidence after Congress formally asks you for it, you definitely didn’t “get away” with it. And if the Homeland Security Inspector General and the National Archives are now investigating the destruction of that evidence as a potentially criminal matter, you definitely didn’t get away with it.

We keep seeing speculation across social media about whether the text messages are retrievable or gone forever. Forensic scientists working for these various investigative bodies will eventually retrieve them, if they’re retrievable. In the meantime, this is about identifying, cornering, and extracting cooperation from the Secret Service personnel involved.

Even if they weren’t part of the deletion plot, the Secret Service agents who witnessed Trump’s January 6th actions have no way of knowing if the texts will be recovered. If their testimony up to this point hasn’t been honest, they’d be smart to correct that right now, while they can still help themselves by doing so.

Moreover, if they weren’t part of the deletion plot, they’d be wise to help all these investigators identify who did delete them. The more cooperation they can give, the more likely they’ll be let off the hook for any misleading testimony they may have previously given.

If there are any Secret Service personnel (agents or otherwise) who are in so deep, they’d rather risk being indicted for obstruction of justice or lying to Congress than get exposed for their January 6th actions, these people obviously wouldn’t want to cooperate without some kind of formal deal in place.

But for every Mark Meadows, there’s usually a Cassidy Hutchinson. The best witnesses are the people who stood next to the alleged perpetrators, saw everything, and heard everything, but didn’t participate in any crimes. They can testify against others without worrying about incriminating themselves.

So the January 6th Committee, the National Archives, and anyone else investigating this scandal will seek out those in the Secret Service who did nothing wrong but witnessed everything. That’s who these kinds of probes always look for.

This is all separate from the forensic attempts at recovering the text messages. This is about banging proverbial heads and scaring people into fessing up before someone in their orbit can give them up, or the text messages have a chance to possibly be recovered.

Some folks are mocking the National Archives for asking the Secret Service to investigate itself over this. But if the National Archives wants to make a criminal referral over the text deletion, it has to follow a specific process first, in case people end up on criminal trial.

We just watched Steve Bannon make a bunch of pretrial motions aimed at stalling or getting charges thrown out. The reason those motions failed is that the 1/6 committee and the DOJ didn’t cut corners while dealing with Bannon. If they had, the judge might have tossed the charges. Given the possibility of criminal charges over the deleted Secret Service texts, the investigative bodies looking into the matter all have to do things by the book in order to ensure a conviction if charges do end up being brought.